[Dracko]

teehee
_________________

[JamesE]

Holy shit, for some people cheating at Starcraft campaign IS the fun...

[ninjafetus]

I don't see it as that different than banning XBLA accounts for cheating achievements.

[sarsamis]

They have to make sure all those avatars are rightfully earned, I guess.

[JamesE]

[Tulpa]

man Valve just blocks achievements from being earned while cheats are on in single player
_________________

[luckystrike]

Well, right. Same for Starcraft 2. You switch on an official in-game cheat, you disable achievements for that level and can fuck around to your hearts content.

These guys were specifically using 3rd party trainers and hacks (none of which do anything that the official cheats couldn't) which bypassed the achievement disabling, most likely for the express purpose of racking up achievement score and unlocking portraits and titles, or at the very least with that being an unintended benefit.

Also, if these dudes were totally set on using these trainers for whatever reason, they could have easily done so without reprimand while playing the single-player game offline, which disables achievements anyways.

Obviously achievement score and meta-game trophies are super dumb, but if a company is going to put them in the game, they are sort of required to defend their worth.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Yet another way achievements are ruining videogames.
_________________

[Pat the Great]

You can get most of the achievements by loading downloaded saves, I think.
_________________
-pat m.
twitter

[Broco]

Random bump to mention I've started playing this again lately, since I finally have a bit of a lull at work.

I've been rotating evenly between races and dicking around a lot trying to improve my feel for what works -- combined with long intervals between games, I haven't been playing very well-planned or efficient games and it hasn't done my ranking any favors. My theorycraft is now pretty solid but my execution isn't there.

Overall, my comfort zone is still definitely with Terran. My favorite thing about them is that their Orbital Command macro mechanic always feels like a nice bonus smoothing over whatever pain point you have at the moment. Plopped down a new expansion? Put all the workers there on gas to begin with and MULE the shit out of its minerals. Worried about what your enemy is hiding, or getting attacked by invisible guys? Scan away. Supply blocked? Not for long. It's the total opposite of the other races, especially Zerg. With Zerg, creating larva is just a tedious obligation that you're harshly punished for not doing. With Protoss, the punishment for forgetting Chronoboost is less visible but it's essentially the same story, and the benefit is nullified if you're sloppy with keeping your buildings active anyway.

Zerg play in general feels like a hazard course of obligations and pitfalls. The larva thing is only the start of it. If you're ever supply blocked, you're totally hosed because overlords take forever to build. If you build too many expansions you're hosed early game, not enough you're hosed mid-game. If you don't make creep all over the map, you can't send your blob quickly to defend your expansions. If your opponent goes air and you haven't teched a counter, you're hosed. Of course the only way to scout the air inside the enemy wallin is to send an overlord, which gets back to the supply block issue. If you navigate all this successfully you end up in a pleasant position of taking over the whole map, replenishing giant armies instantly and putting up some duplicate tech buildings so you don't even care if your main base is destroyed, but man is it a slog to get there.

Protoss look like fun to play. They have fantastic army mobility, with warpgates, blink, colossus cliff climbing, all-purpose air (void ray) and generally fast movement speed. As Terran, I've repeatedly gotten massacred by Protoss back attacks while my army was elsewhere. The Sentries and High Templars also have very generally useful spells. But I haven't really mastered these Protoss tricks myself yet and basically have been just playing them like Terrans, so I mainly notice their weaker points like the poorer macro mechanic, difficulty in walling in etc.

So I think from now on I'll settle on playing 90% Terran and learn some proper build orders so I can start putting my knowledge to use. I'm planning to focus on 1/1/1 and the general counters to enemy strategies:

* In TvT, slowly pushing forward with tanks and vikings, denying expansions and attacking from advantageous terrain seems the way to go.

* In TvZ, get up in the Zerg player's face and attack his bases constantly with my pound-for-pound tougher units before he gains map control. At your main base and each expansion, couple of tanks, towers combined with the currently building reinforcements should be enough to hold off Zerg counterattacks provided he hasn't run creep up to your side of the map yet. Also, constantly mess with him with Banshee and Viking (v.s. overlord).

* TvP seems like the most complicated. It's hard to attack Protoss with your main army when you don't have a decisive advantage because 'toss is tough and also has the option of striking back wherever your army isn't. So you have to turtle a bit and focus on M&M-drop/banshee harassment while the bulk of your army stays home. Ideally, you want to build a huge army of the counter of whatever unit the Protoss is focusing on, supplement that army with ghosts and then lure the Toss main force into a confrontation on the open field where you EMP the crap out of him and mow him down, then walk to his main base to cement your win. And you really have to scout the Protoss main base properly and think carefully about what kind of unit you're focusing on, because Toss has a variety of great options and you're dead if he attacks with a thing you didn't expect. Generally, your backbone is MMM and Ghost, but if he's doing a lot of X you need to counter with a lot of Y:
- Zealots/Photon cannons -> go Siege tank
- Stalker/Immortal -> Marauder
- Void Ray -> Marine/Viking/Thor
- Colossus -> Viking/Banshee and go lighter on the bio


I'm also going to try to get into a more regular rhythm with my game. I need to remember every 30 seconds or so to go 4 (control group, orbital command macro mechanic/worker building), 5 (army buildings), 6 (research), then check supply, check my money and see if I can build more buildings, then move around some units on the map to start harassment. Then 15 seconds or so of "free play" for whatever most needs doing at the moment, then go back to the beginning of the routine. As it is, I spend too much time flailing and thinking about what I need to do next instead of just doing it.

So that's my overall game plan. Let's see how it works out in practice.

[Predator Goose]

Reviving this topic to say I've actually been getting into this game after my initial reservations. I gotta say, out of the few RTSes I've played this one is the most accessible. It's got a well paced campaign where you can mess around learning things like macro, control groups and build orders without too much worry and very decent help and tutorial options available. And the grid hotkeys! Rough to get used to after campaign, but I really like the practicality.

Actually played some 2v2 with Booji yesterday against 2 medium AI opponents and discovered just how terrible I am. We got rushed early and rolled a couple of times due to lacking the defenses to take out those early roaches or the mutalisks following soon after. Campaign habits were clearly showing as we were forgetting important, basic things like researching siege tech, stimp packs or unit upgrades. Eventually we settled into bunkering down with decent siege tank forces and focused on grabbing a couple of extra expansions and tech-ing up to battle cruisers before rolling over the AI. Rinse and repeat about 3~4 times. It felt good, but I know that's not how the game is supposed to go. With even moderately more capable AI we'd be sitting ducks while we teched up and stuck holding the bag if the AI had a hard counter to Battle cruisers. Not to mention I vacillate between having 1000+ minerals to being mineral locked when I'm trying to pump BCs. So. A long way to go.

Those early rushes were a serious pain in the ass by the way. Couldn't build marines fast enough to deal with the roaches they'd send in so on half those maps I had to beat a hasty retreat and take a hit to the economy. It didn't help that I didn't know what the counter to roaches were or what the hell that unit was even called (Seriously, whose idea was it to have all enemy units labeled as 'Enemy swarm'. Experienced players already know the difference, only beginners are penalized by this obfuscation). Was happy to learn this morning though that the early challenge missions are actually all about teaching you what the enemy types are and the counters to them based on race. Basically I should have been pumping a couple of marauders to deal with the roach rush instead of marines. So again, definitely like some of the help options available in this game.

Also this topic has been rather helpful for suggestions so thanks for that!
_________________
I can no longer shop happily.

[Broco]

Yeah, roach rushes are a serious threat to Terran, particularly on small maps. I've gotten dominated by them even though I was teching to marauders and walled in reasonably quickly. The thing is that even a single roach is a threat very early on, so it can be used to turn a slight early development speed advantage into an immediate victory -- attack with one roach and kill the first few marines, gradually reinforce with more roaches and kill the units as they come out of the barracks one at a time (if the marauders start coming out too late, they won't be a powerful enough counter). It's pretty sad to see this slow-motion rush gradually roll over you and not be able to do anything to stop it. The only defense is good scouting and just plain fast/efficient macro before it arrives.

But, most bronze/silver-league players don't know about this rush, so I'm not saying it's a huge deal. It's just one of the many, many things that you need to know how to deal with before you can win consistently. Zergling rush is much more common and that's easy to counter with the usual ramp wallin.

[CubaLibre]

Every high-level game I've ever seen with Battlecruisers has proven them to be ponderous, expensive, ineffective wastes of time and resources. Have lost people games, even, when invested into too heavily. A lot like real-life aircraft carriers.
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[Broco]

Dunno, most of my experience with battlecruisers (mainly in Practice League, where they come up more often because rushes don't work there) is that they were pretty good, but that was before a patch that nerfed them. They don't have any particular strengths or weaknesses, they are just generally powerful (but that doesn't mean you're getting your money's worth). If you don't put enough pressure on a player and let him accumulate a crapload of them (>20), they'll destroy just about anything. Same with Protoss Carriers.

They are relevant particularly in turtle scenarios: either the turtle himself is collecting those cruisers for a long time, or the player with the map control can build a ton of them quickly to bust into his base. I don't think that happens in high-level games, no, but they're still a relevant part of the game.

[CubaLibre]

From what I've seen, even in large games they're easily countered. Outranged by vikings, easy pickings for stalkers (especially with blink) or hydras. Carriers and broodlords have one distinct advantage: their attacks are themselves little units that really mess with AI. BCs do a lot of damage but it's not frontloaded; so while you're picking away at one unit at a time, ten stalkers have blinked underneath you and shot you simultaneously, cutting half your health in a millisecond. Next shot, you're dead. Also, the fact that they accrue energy even without the Yamato being researched leaves them extremely vulnerable to emp/feedback.

Keep in mind I don't actually play SC2, I just watch a lot of replays. But in high-level games BCs seem mostly a boondoggle. (Ultralisks too, for different reasons.)
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[Broco]

I wouldn't call that "easily". I mean look at what you just explained, you need to have good scouting and macro to build a big clump of the counter before the cruisers attack, then also maintain tight micro to consistently kite/blink the cruisers. Against an opponent who fails to do all that, the cruiser pile wins by default. I'm just saying, I came in assuming as well that battlecruisers were a joke because every good player says so, then I lost to them a couple of times and stopped mocking them quite so much. In a match between two less expert players they are quite effective.

I would say Brood Lords are a different kind of unit entirely despite superficially being on the same place on the tech tree. They are much weaker individually and they have no defense against air. Because Zerg is all about accumulating massive clumps of overpriced units thanks to greater production/resource accumulation anyway, a unit like Battlecruiser or Carrier would be too much up their alley and be unbalanced.

[CubaLibre]

Certainly broodlords aren't the same thing - nothing in SC2 is the same - but they're a big slow flying unit with a lot of HP that has high DPS over time. That's the only comparison I was trying to make.
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[Broco]

Well, you didn't really say anything inaccurate, I just brought it up because I got burned by analogizing Brood Lords to the other capital ships before. According to Liquipedia, Battlecruisers have 550 HP and 35 DPS, Carriers have 450 HP and 26 DPS, while Brood Lords have 225 HP and 8 DPS. They were a lot weaker than I expected when I first used them, and it's easy to not send enough of them if you're used to the other races' capital ships.

[Predator Goose]

Good to know the BC build up isn't completely useless. Still, I gotta work on either a midgame solution to push the enemy (MMM - though I suck with medivacs, or Siege Tank & Thor artillery bombardment. maybe? Orbital scans for line of sight). Or work on defending more efficiently and teching up faster. Kind of unnecessary to have 50 marines sitting around when I'm making a BC push.

I just realized you could save during the challenges! That makes things a lot more doable. Also I now feel slightly silly for looking up video walkthroughs on how to beat Protoss Assault. Because Jesus Hell what am I going to do with Templars and sentries. Apparently wall a lot.
_________________
I can no longer shop happily.

[Broco]

For line-of-sight, it's more typical to build Vikings. These will also help defend against all kinds of air threats. Orbital scans should be used sparingly since you do need that energy for muling.

Using both siege tank and thor at once is a bit heavy on the mech. You'll be weak against anti-armor. I usually prefer to accompany my mechs with marauders. It's a good way of continuing to exploit your early-game barracks and infantry techs.

Also, keep in mind MMM is weak against mech, so in TvT it's only useful in the early game. Medivacs are hard to handle too yeah: in a sense their mobility is nerfed by how awkward they are to control. Common mistakes: don't move them at all while they're unloading or they'll stop the unload, and watch your clicking to make sure your troops don't reenter them by mistake.

[Broco]

Anyway, I should note that I still suck hard at this game, but I act like a knowledgeable player on SB! I haven't even played in a while because it's too intense and was giving me insomnia if I played it too late. Funny, I have no problem at all playing Left 4 Dead, Vanquish, Puzzle League, and all manner of other fast-paced games, but I find this game of clicking on little space toys to be in a whole different league of pressure. It's just so relentless in how fast and efficient you need to be in every second of play, and on multiple factors at once.

[Ronnoc]

Man, I'm all up on the RTS games now, and I figured I should check this bugger out if I'm going to tell people to play DOWII instead so I watched a couple of replays. Guys, what the EFF? This game is for serious some crazy nonsense. From what I can tell, it takes upwards of 10 minutes for anyone to get in an engagement, and when you do, everything dies in two seconds flat. I was all up watching this business and I will tell you right now that it makes no sense.

To be fair, it took me 10 hours to learn how to play DOWII and I've put a lot more time into it now and I'm still terrible.

[Broco]

Well. It's usually 8 or 9 minutes. And 10 seconds.

I don't see this as a flaw, but I guess you could say Starcraft is a bit of a bait-and-switch if you come in expecting a strategy game. It's about military logistics.

[Ronnoc]

Oh man, this discussion is already fun! I'm not giving you 10 seconds, though! 5 at the most.

I think when you say 'strategy' you really mean tactics. I mean, if I'm about to use DOWII as an example (and I will), the game is heavily tactical. Depending on the map, the first engagement happens anywhere from 15 seconds to a minute thirty in, with the average being about 45 seconds to a minute. Squads are about to last a lot longer than units in SC2, and they have a built-in retreat button, so there's obviously a different emphasis going down. Tactics are generally the battles themselves, and strategy is how they are linked together and the logistic behind it all, but on a wider scale, it's more about understanding and manipulating the game's economy. Strategy itself only really comes in in how you do that and what dudes you build.

I would argue, from my understanding (about an hour of watching games full disclosure) that SC2 is much more of a strategy game.


I still say that this is some hardcore nonsense, though! These dudes are about to do hundreds of things a minute, I can't tell what even is going on.

[Broco]

I used 'strategy' to mean the combination of strategy and tactics. A lot of SCII is neither. To some degree, it doesn't matter what you build, as long as you have more of it than your opponent. That comes from all that crazy clicking. In those first 8 minutes of the game, what is really going on is that the players are shaving a second here and a second there through careful planning and quick reactions to different events (enough food, minerals or gas for the next development step), and thus end up with more units earlier than the opponent.

Strategic matters like army composition and attack timing gain most of their depth in the way they interact with the logistics. Players plan in advance for a target army size/mix, but this plan is always subject to change based on enemy actions, so that you can't simply memorize one build order. Surprise attacks can divert resources and attention from development, and scouted enemy unit types may require a change of building direction to counter them. SCII always keeps you constantly juggling balls at your home base even as the ground shifts under you. Or, rather, it's two jugglers each trying to push the other guy out of balance. Sumo juggling.

[haze]

[another god]

[Pat the Great]

The main advantage Battlecruisers have over Carriers and Brood Lords is that they can be repaired. Couple that with +1 air armor and you have a very resilient unit. IMO they're nice for TvT because Battlecruiser armor > Marines and Thors, so you only really have to worry about Vikings trying to kite.
_________________
-pat m.
twitter

[Ronnoc]

[Broco]

Same reason people play a fast-paced puzzle game like Tetris Attack or Digidrive, or one of those restaurant sims where you have a queue of customers and dishes that you run around carefully timing. It's pretty satisfying when all the elements fall into place exactly when they should.

[Ronnoc]

Hmm, I'll have to think about this one.

[Ronnoc]

I guess that's fair enough, but I'm not sure if it makes for riveting television. Apparently it does.

[Monochrome]

One thing that tends to trip up new players is the set of game mechanics. Maybe more accurately, the fact that Starcraft has game mechanics at all. You are used to thinking of operating system elements like selecting, dragging and shortcut keys as interface elements. It's time to start thinking of them as game mechanics, no different than doing a fighting game combo or pushing an analog stick to move a character.

When you say "real time strategy" people have a tendency to only hear the last of those three words, and then they sit around scratching their chins like it's Civilization. The Tetris comparison is very apt -- both games involve thinking and planning, but you are also under the gun to perform efficiently and effectively.

If the length of the early game sounds dull, there are various cheap-shots that can happen in those first few minutes. Some of these are "harassment" designed to gain an economic advantage, while others are "all-in" gambles that do not have a backup plan. Starcraft and Warcraft are really unforgiving, but that's another post.

Anyway, I'd be happy if they upped the starting worker count to eight, because in the first 40 seconds you're right, nothing goddamn happens. Only Zerg can do anything at all with six workers, and I personally think Blizzard chose nostalgia over good game design there.

[Broco]

I like the first 40 seconds. It's a chance to breathe, get emotionally ready and think about your intention for the game (a battle plan, or an area you'd like to focus on improving your skills at).

[boojiboy7]

[Predator Goose]

I get what Retreat Syndrome is saying, at least as Terran. As Terran those first 40 seconds are ALWAYS spent the same way, i.e. train those two scv. Then supply depot so that you can build a barracks. Then a barracks so that you can build anything else.
_________________
I can no longer shop happily.

[CubaLibre]

Partially though for Terran that's a balance thing. It didn't used to be that way (you could build barracks before depot) and people whined about Reaper rushes, so.
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[another god]

[CubaLibre]

Well ok, I'm not trying to make a moral judgment. Just saying that the very beginning of the Terran game is slightly more restricted than Z and P specifically in order to discourage reaper rushes.
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[bza]

[another god]